As you might have already figured out, we are moving ahead with the plan to restructure our marketplace, which will provide each hosting product with its own dedicated advertising forum. Not only will it streamline and modernize our marketplace, it will improve targeting for companies promoting their services and simplify the search for clients looking for specific solutions.

There are over 16,500 threads between the two forums, and more are added daily. Going through that volume of threads one by one would take weeks, even if done in a team of 2-3 people working on it, yet my idea was to wrap the whole process in 3 to 5 days, or quicker. The only way it can happen this quick is if we involve as many helpers as possible. Imagine a little army of experienced forum-ers who can help manage a number of threads whenever they have the time.

I have prepared a detailed and an easy to follow guide of the actions that needs to be performed. The advantage we have is that all of you here are proficient in the topic, so understanding products/services in order to make a moderating call is not going to be much of a challenge.

I am creating a special usergroup "HD Volunteer" that will enable a member in this group to perform these specific tasks. These volunteers will be temporarily assigned to that group until the objective is accomplished.

Because of the responsibility of such a position, we'd like to attract members with a positive track record who we know through either personal contact or their contributions.

If you'd like to get involved and play the part in building our new marketplace, simply reply to this post or PM me directly and I will get back to you. It doesn't matter whether you are able to help with 10 threads per day or 100, whether you can spend 5 minutes a day or 2 hours, everything helps!

Once we attract enough volunteers, we will coordinate the start time of the effort and then just dig through the whole thing, together. Communication will take place over Flock app (I will send out the invite to join the group), which has free software for Win/Mac and mobile devices. I hope that this community project will also give us a chance to bond, as we aim to have some fun in the process as well! :thumbup:

Artashes

03-29-2017 08:11 AM

We have our first volunteer! :thumbup:

This is exciting. :)

Artashes

03-29-2017 02:05 PM

Two more volunteers joined the mission!

The more people we can attract to this, the quicker we can make the improvements everyone can enjoy. :)

Artashes

04-03-2017 08:27 PM

A total of 5 people (including yours truly) have been so far approved to be on the volunteer team, but it is simply not enough.

We need a lot more hands on deck for the big move. Only volume would allow us to move the Marketplace to its new format fairly quickly.

Artashes

05-03-2017 06:26 PM

With close to 10 people on deck, we have sufficient people to get started with the marketplace changes.

Extra love to all who responded! Lots of work ahead, but for now we aren't looking for more people.